Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Concurring Beasts | 1972 | Stephen Dobyns | Buy |
| 2 | Griffon | 1976 | Stephen Dobyns | Buy |
| 3 | Heat Death | 1980 | Stephen Dobyns | Buy |
| 4 | The Balthus Poems | 1982 | Stephen Dobyns | Buy |
| 5 | Cemetery Nights | 1987 | Stephen Dobyns | Buy |
| 6 | Body Traffic | 1990 | Stephen Dobyns | Buy |
| 7 | Velocities | 1994 | Stephen Dobyns | Buy |
| 8 | Common Carnage | 1996 | Stephen Dobyns | Buy |
| 9 | Black Dog, Red Dog | 1997 | Stephen Dobyns | Buy |
| 10 | Pallbearers Envying the One Who Rides | 1999 | Stephen Dobyns | Buy |
| 11 | Eating Naked | 2000 | Stephen Dobyns | Buy |
| 12 | The Porcupine’s Kisses | 2002 | Stephen Dobyns | Buy |
| 13 | Mystery, So Long | 2005 | Stephen Dobyns | Buy |
| 14 | Winter’s Journey | 2010 | Stephen Dobyns | Buy |
| 15 | The Day’s Last Light Reddens the Leaves of the Copper Beech | 2016 | Stephen Dobyns | Buy |
Stephen Dobyns has published poetry and short fiction collections steadily since 1972, when Concurring Beasts won the Lamont Poetry Prize. His work is known for its narrative clarity, dark humor, and willingness to engage directly with uncomfortable subjects like death, lust, and cruelty.
His poetry collections include Cemetery Nights (1987), which blends gothic imagery with domestic settings, and Velocities (1994), which explores speed, change, and loss. Eating Naked (2000) gathers short stories rather than poems, showing Dobyns’s fiction skills in compressed form. Later collections like Mystery, So Long (2005) and The Day’s Last Light Reddens the Leaves of the Copper Beech (2016) find Dobyns in a more reflective mode, looking back over a long career while still writing with his characteristic edge.